At its heart, Windows 10, which will begin rolling out gradually as a free update, is a rescue mission. It’s an attempt to almost fully backpedal from its 2012 predecessor, Windows 8 (they are skipping 9), which was a radical effort to redefine the way Windows looked and worked. That experiment failed to win the hearts and wallets of consumers, and is estimated to have only about a 16 percent share of global PC users.

I’ve been using Windows 10 on VirtualBox on my MacBook Air at work for quite some time (we’re still standardized on Windows 7 in most areas), and have found it to be a satisfying update. For the few tasks I need Windows for, I probably could get by with 7 (heck, even XP), but I was curious to see what Microsoft’s latest and greatest is like. Undoing the last few years will be important for Microsoft, and I think Windows 10 is a step in the right direction.

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